I. Розділ 1
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Oil-field workers organise, Galicia, C1
Boryslav Laughs Борислав сміється
Ivan Franko, 1957
The complete original in Ukrainian of Ivan Franko’s novel, everything he wrote of it, not an adaptation: the novel itself is unfinished and breaks off in chapter XX. It is for C1 readers who want what is often called the first Ukrainian novel about industrial workers, set among the oil pits of 1870s Galicia. About 79,800 words in 20 chapters, 14 words per sentence on average.
- C1
- 79 764 words
- 13-22 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the descriptive chapters are the wall: V and VI average about 18 words per sentence and IX about 23, dense with oil-field words like ріпник, корба and церезина and Galician forms like котрий for який. The dialogue chapters, such as VII and XV, read more easily.
B2C1
This text
At C1 you can read it with single-word taps: the workers’ arguments move fast, and the long chapters on business and unrest are worth taking slowly.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the novel reads freely; only the trade jargon of the oil fields, the old Galician spelling of this edition (хемик, Европа) and the odd German word (Aufschwindl) slow you down.
Start readingThe average sentence has 14 words and almost one word in ten (9.8%) has 9 letters or more: close to Franko’s Boa constrictor (15 words, 10.0%), set in the same oil town, and above his Малий Мирон та інші оповідання (12.9 words, 9.6%), a B2 in this catalogue. The share of long words alone sits on the line; what tips it to C1 is the vocabulary. The oil fields fill the pages: ріпник (oil-pit digger) appears 116 times, віск (ozokerite wax) 59, підприємець (owner) 90, церезина (ceresin, refined wax) 29. Galician forms are everywhere: the relative pronoun котрий, where standard Ukrainian prefers який, comes 264 times, and мусів, гадка, відки run through the dialogue. The difficulty comes in waves: chapter IX averages about 23 words per sentence, chapters V, VI and XIII about 18, while VII, XV and XIX stay at 10-13. Hence C1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 79 764
- words
- 14
- words in an average sentence
- 13-22
- hours of reading
- 1957
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1957. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
In Drohobych, Benedio Synytsia, a mason’s young mate, helps lay the foundation stone of a new house for the oil magnate Leon Hammerschlag. Leon and his rival Herman Goldkremer, the wax king of Boryslav, plan to seal an alliance by marrying their children, Fanni and Herman’s wayward son Gottlieb. When Benedio goes to work in Boryslav, he finds a town of mud, oil pits and taverns, where the diggers are cheated of their pay at every turn. He is taken into a secret brotherhood of workers led by Andrus Basarab and his brother Sen, who keep tally sticks of every wrong done by the owners. Benedio argues for a common fund and joint action instead of revenge, while Leon stakes his fortune on ceresin, a new wax invented in Vienna, and the unrest spreads from pit to pit. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Борислав сміється
IX. Розділ 9
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Choose an underlined word.
Galician town talk
Franko’s Drohobych speaks the Galician Ukrainian of the 1870s. The „планти“ are the town’s promenades (from Polish planty), костьол is a Catholic church, and раст is the break signal, from German Rast; прошу пана (“if you please, sir”) is how a worker addresses his boss. Note the quotation marks „…“ of this edition and ново-розпочатій, written today as новорозпочатій.
Wait for the subject
The first sentence holds back its subject: почалися ... розмови comes only after a list of places (при корбах, при млинках, по шинках). Then the verbs pile up for what the rich do: уривають, кривдять, туманять, поштурхують, висмівають. чимраз більше means “more and more”, and був би міг сказати is an old conditional, “could have said”.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
In chapter IX the workers’ talk spreads “розбігалися на всі боки, мов огонь по сухій соломі” (“running off in all directions, like fire through dry straw”): translating the whole sentence in Reader shows how the long chain of places and verbs before it comes together.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the complete text of everything Franko wrote of the novel, not an abridgement, but the novel itself is unfinished: it came out in the Lviv magazine Світ (“The World”) in 1881-1882 and breaks off in chapter XX. The text comes from volume X of Franko’s Works in 20 volumes (Knyhospilka, New York, 1957), taken from Wikisource. That edition adds a short summary of a possible ending written by his son Petro Franko; it is not Ivan Franko’s text and is not included here. The spelling is that edition’s, with Galician forms such as котрий and мусів left as Franko wrote them.
Is there an audiobook?
Boryslav Laughs has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read on screen. Tap a word to see its translation; you will need it most for oil-field words such as ріпник (oil-pit digger) and корба (the windlass over a pit).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in chapter IX, where sentences average about 23 words, and with lines like “Хто його знає, відки й як, досить того, що новим духом повіяло в Бориславі” (“Who knows where from or how, but a new spirit was blowing through Boryslav”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novel takes about 13-22 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The chapters are uneven: chapter XVIII has about 1,150 words, chapters I, II and IV between 6,500 and 7,500 each, so the long ones are best spread over several evenings.
Where does the text get easier?
Not steadily: the difficulty comes in waves. The hardest chapter is IX, about 23 words per sentence and 13.2% long words, followed by V, VI and XIII at about 18, where Franko explains the business of wax and ceresin. The lightest are VII (12.5 words, 6.8% long words), XV (10.5) and XIX (11.2), carried by dialogue. Chapters I-IV stay at about 14 words.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back to the novel where you left off. Any of the 20 chapters opens from the contents on this page, for example V. Розділ 5, where Leon Hammerschlag rides to Boryslav dreaming of ceresin.